“What? No!” Harper exclaimed, backing away—at least, as far as Pie-lo’s hand around her arm would let her.
“Perhaps another, my lord,” Pie-lo said, his grip tightening on her upper arm until Harper was sure she was going to have a bruise. “This one is new. She just came to us and the sex-milk hasn’t had time to take effect. As you can see, her breasts are not even filled yet. And we cannot allow an exchange of body fluids until the safety period is over.”
“Don’t care about her breasts.” The alien’s eyes—which were a muddy yellow color—gleamed lustfully . “And I like a girl with some fight in her. The rest here are all too eager. I like it when they scream and beg and try to stop me.”
“So you like to rape women, is that what you’re saying?” Harper spat. “You sick bastard!”
“Call it what you want, girlie.” He spat to one side, his eyes never leaving her body. “But if you ask me, a haughty bitch like you needs to be taken down a peg or two.” He looked back at Pie-lo. “How much for just a fuck?”
Pie-lo frowned. “I don’t know… We run a happy tent here with willing girls. Screams and cries of pain and terror are poor advertisement for our trade.”
“I’ll pay double the going rate and put my hand over her mouth to keep her quiet,” the male offered. “Surely you can’t pass that up.”
“Well…” Pie-lo nodded thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, that does sound like a fair deal. And as long as you’re not exchanging fluids with her, it won’t invalidate the sex-milk already in her system. All right—agreed. Seventy credits.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Harper cried, as the purple-skinned alien male paid the asking price and took her by the arm. “You can’t do this to me! I don’t belong to you! You can’t just let some evil bastard off the street come in here and…and…” But she couldn’t finish the sentence. Dread rose, thick in her throat. Harper felt like she might be sick again and this time she wouldn’t have to stick her finger down her throat to do it.
“Now then, girlie…” Pie-lo patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t you worry. You’ll forget all about it once the sex-milk takes effect.”
“So you think it’s all right to let him rape me now because I’ll forget it later?” Harper demanded. “No—no!”
She began to struggle in earnest but the male who had paid to use her clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her cries and started dragging her over to the couch.
The other girls moved aside, their eyes wide with uncertainty. Clearly they weren’t used to such violent displays.
Or maybe they are used to them and they just can’t remember. Maybe that awful stuff they drink erases their memories of traumatic events too, Harper thought wildly. She continued to claw and fight and kick but the alien who had chosen her was big—probably as big as Shad—and he seemed to really be enjoying her struggle.
“That’s right—fight me,” he crooned as he forced her down onto the couch. “Put up a fight while I drain my balls in your tight little snatch.”
His hand over her mouth shifted as he spoke and Harper was finally able to open her lips enough to get the tender meat of his palm between her teeth. She sank them in, biting as hard as she could.
The male howled and yanked his hand away, spattering green blood across the cream colored cushions of the couch.
Well, that’s going to stain, Harper thought distractedly. Then again, why would you pick cream as a color for a sex-couch anyway? It was just asking for trouble.
Aloud she said, “You like that? You asked me to fight you—how does it feel, asshole?”
“Bitch!” The alien backhanded her across the face as hard as he could.
Harper’s head rocked back and stars exploded in front of her vision. Still, she wouldn’t give up fighting.
“Get off!” she screamed, kicking up so that her foot connected directly with the green alien’s crotch. “Get off me, you son-of-a-bitch.”
“I suggest you do what the lady says,” a deep, familiar voice said.
The green alien, who was already doubling up into a ball of agony, was suddenly yanked off her and thrown to one side.
Harper looked up to see Shad standing over her, his white eyes blazing with barely suppressed fury. She didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see anyone in her life.
“Oh, Shad,” she gasped, struggling to get off the hateful couch. She couldn’t help noticing the big Kindred was holding a gun-like weapon in his hand. Had he had that on him before? Or was it something he’d gotten at the market?
“Come here, sweetheart.” He held out an arm to her and she ran to him, pressing close to his side. God, she was just so glad to see him!
“Here now, here now!” Pie-lo and Auntie Bru-bru came bustling up, identical frowns on their faces as they stepped carefully over their still-groaning customer.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Auntie Bru-bru demanded, her blue prune features getting even prunier with disapproval. “You can’t come barging in here hurting our paying customers and grabbing the nursing girls!”
“Your customer was about to rape my female unless I’m very much mistaken,” Shad growled.
“She’s not your female!” Pie-lo exclaimed indignantly. “Our slidy took her fair and square. She belongs to us now.”
“I might have to disagree with you there.” Shad turned his weapon on the two alien pimps and glared at them. “And it looks like my blaster disagrees too. Care to discuss it? Or should I just take Harper and go?”
A sullen look came over Auntie Bru-bru’s wrinkled face.
“It’s getting so a tent owner can’t make a decent living at the market anymore!”
“Not if you’re making a living off the misery of others, you fucking whore-masters,” Shad growled. “Harper and I are leaving now. Don’t try to stop us or you’ll be sorry.”
“All right, fine—just go!” Pie-lo snapped. “But know this—your little female has drunk of the sex-milk. You’ll be wishing you’d left her here right enough, as soon as her breasts start to leak and she needs more of the milk to control her cravings.”
“I puked up your disgusting sex milk,” Harper responded, lifting her chin. “So you can bite me, you asshole.”
“Oh, you’ll want biting all right, girlie.” Pie-lo’s alien eyes gleamed. “And fucking and sucking. Anything to try and fill the need. I hope you’ll enjoy the unendurable cravings when your nectar comes in.”
His words made Harper uneasy but she was 100% certain she’d thrown up just about every drop of sex-milk she’d ingested. Well, maybe 99.9% certain…
Fine, she told herself uneasily. I’ll be fine! He’s just trying to freak me out.
“Come on, Harper,” Shad jerked his head. “We need to get out of here.”
“In a minute.” On impulse, Harper ran to the back of the tent and shoved the towering silver fountain. It was heavier than it looked and for a moment she wasn’t sure she could budge it. Then, she put her shoulder into it and heaved.
With a slosh and a gurgle, the silver fountain went over, the pale purple sex-milk sloping over its silver sides to soak the carpet below.
Auntie Bru-bru’s face got even more wrinkled with dismay and she rushed over to the fallen fountain.
“Oh, no! Our milk—our lovely sex-milk!” she cried. “Do you know how much it costs to start a new batch? You can’t even get the ingredients this time of year!”
“Good,” Harper snapped, coming back to Shad, who was covering her with his blaster and keeping Pie-lo from interfering. “Maybe some of these girls can leave this awful life and go back to their homes.” She turned to Shad. “Can that thing in your hand cut through, uh, tickle-tape?”
“You mean the barrier they have set up around the tent?” He shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“Do it then. Blast a hole in it so when these girls come back to their right minds they can escape and get out of this awful place,” Harper implored him.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Pie-lo snarled. “You can’t take our entire stable!”
“Oh, yes we can,” Harper snapped back. “Shad—do it.”
He took aim through the open flap of the tent and shot a beam of pure, silver energy from the muzzle of his blaster. Harper watched as it hit the blue police-tape-looking barrier squarely and disintegrated the entire thing.
“The tickle-tape…” Nandi’s voice sounded soft and wondering. “The barrier—it’s gone. It’s all gone.”
“That’s right.” Harper turned and took the alien girl's delicate hands in her own. “And that means you’re free, Nandi. You can go back to your old life.”
“My old life?” A look of dawning comprehension lighted the alien girl’s face. “That’s right—I did have another life before I came here. I only wanted to visit my cousin on the other side of the market.”
“And now you can go do that. Or go back home,” Harper said gently. “I bet you have parents who are worried about you.”
“Mana and Patah.” Nandi nodded. “They probably wonder where I went.”
“Go home to them,” Harper urged her. She lifted her voice. “All of you—you’re free to go home now. Go home.”
Some of the girls seemed to get the idea faster than others. Harper thought that the ones who had been there the longest and had ingested the most sex-milk probably had the hardest time understanding. Still, they all eventually seemed to get it and started wandering out of the tent.
“Stop! Come back! You don’t want to leave your sweet Auntie Bru-bru!” The old woman and her son would have rushed after the retreating girls but Shad motioned at them with his blaster to be still.
“I don’t think so,” he growled. “Let them go. You’ve stolen enough of their lives.”
“But how will we make our living?” Auntie Bru-bru whined.
“Get out and work for it,” Shad advised. “Or die in the dirt for all I care. That’s what you deserve.” His face was a mask of cold fury as he turned to Harper. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They turned and left, ignoring the curses and cries the old woman and her son shouted after them.
As their angry, whining voices faded at last, Harper thought she had never been so glad to get away from anywhere in her life.
* * * * *
Shad had to fight with every ounce of his willpower not to go back and blast every single person who had threatened Harper to dust and atoms.
But though he might get away with a certain amount of violence—this was the Thieves' Market, after all—there were limits to what the Guards of the Market would turn a blind eye to. Also, they didn’t need to attract any more attention than they already had.
“Talk to me,” he said to Harper. “Distract me. I want to go back and kill them all for daring to touch you.” He looked at her. “They didn’t, did they? Didn’t…violate you?”
“They tried,” she said grimly. “But no, I’m okay. I kicked the bastard who was trying to…trying to rape me…” She swallowed hard. “Kicked him square in the crotch. He can probably wear his balls for a bowtie right about now.”
“Good.” Hearing that she had not been molested and that her attacker had been painfully punished did a lot to calm the fury that had boiled up inside him.
Harper looked for a moment as though she was struggling with her emotions. Shad watched as she took a deep breath and blew it out shakily.
“Are you all right?” he asked roughly.
“Fine.” Harper sniffed and made a visible effort to push back her emotions. “I mean, I was kidnapped by a flying snake and given unspeakable things to drink and almost raped by a sadistic purple alien but you know, other than that, just fine.”
Shad was used to her flippant sense of humor which she used as a defense mechanism when she felt vulnerable, so he only nodded.
He longed to hold her in his arms and comfort her but he knew he could not. If he held her she would cry…then he would kiss away her tears…and that would lead to kissing her ripe, lush mouth and then they would be as emotionally entangled as they had been on all the other paths—the paths where he’d lost her. He wanted her too badly—loved her too much. Yet his love was both dangerous and useless.
He had to keep some distance between them.
But keeping his distance didn’t mean leaving her in the state she was in. He frowned, looking at the small cuts and abrasions he could see on the palms of her hands and her knees. Also, the place on her arm where he’d cut out the tracker had been bleeding again recently.
“Come here,” he told Harper, and took her into the shade of a public water tent.
“What? Why?”
“Just come.” Shad paid for a clean rag from the attendant and then dipped it into one of the barrels of purified drinking water. “You’re a mess,” he told Harper as he began to clean her injuries. “You can’t walk through the market looking like you are now.”
She submitted to him cleaning her arm and palms and knees but when Shad lifted one of her hands to his mouth to lap her abraded skin with his tongue, she tried to pull away.
“Wait! Why do you want to do that?”
“You’ll heal cleaner and faster if I lick your wounds,” Shad said gruffly. He didn’t add that he wanted to taste her—needed to heal her so badly it hurt. Deep inside a little voice was telling him he shouldn’t—that he should just buy some heal-all bandages for her instead. The Goddess knew there were plenty of medical aid tents at the Thieves' Market. But he couldn’t help himself…he needed to taste her!
Harper seemed to consider his words for a long moment before nodding.
“All right—if you say so.”
“I do.” And he brought her soft, sweet palm to his lips and swiped it delicately with his tongue.
* * * * *
Harper gasped at the feel of his mouth on her. Why did it do strange things to her insides when he licked her palms? Even worse was when he dropped to his knees and began to push up the ragged hem of her red dress.
“Wait,” she tried to protest.
Shad looked up at her, frowning.
“I need to heal your knees, Harper and you need to let me. Just hold still, all right?”
His tone was sharp and preemptory but there was something about his face—a longing in those opalescent eyes that made her wonder if he wasn’t just doing this out of necessity. Did he actually want to lick her? To taste her this way?
The strange thought made her blush and she pushed it away.
He doesn’t care for you that way, she reminded herself. He’s only taking care of his investment—that’s all you are, just an investment in the future. A way to save his people. It’s not like he has feelings for you or anything.
She submitted to the warm, wet swipe of his tongue over her tender, skinned knees, trying not to moan as the feeling of his mouth made her quiver. She had to remind herself several times that she didn’t like it when a man tried to go down on her because honestly, that was all she kept seeing in her head—Shad with his broad shoulders splitting her thighs wide as he bent low to kiss and lap her open pussy…
No! she told herself uneasily. What’s wrong with me? I have to stop thinking this way.
She was relieved when Shad finished her knees and then licked her upper arm where the tracker had been placed once more as well.
“There,” he said gruffly. “You should heal with no problems now.”
“Um…thank you,” Harper murmured uncertainly. “For uh, licking me—I mean healing me! Thank you for healing me.” Her face felt so hot she thought her hair would catch on fire. God, how embarrassing. “I, uh, feel much better now,” she stumbled on, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. “I’m sure I’ll be perfectly all right.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better. Here—I almost forgot.” He pulled out her shoe—apparently he’d been carrying it since he’d lost her to that damn winged snake—and gave it back.
Harper slipped it on.
“How did you find me?” she asked, wanting to change the subject as they left the water tent and started walking again.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I was able to follow the slidy’s path visually and saw it was heading for the market. After I got here, I followed my nose.”
“You what?” Harper frowned. “What are you talking about? You mean you literally sniffed me out?” It seemed impossible but Shad nodded.
“Kindred have a much sharper sense of smell than humans.”
“You do? Okay, well I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that you can pick out my scent in the middle of a huge market filled with alien smells and odors.” She laughed nervously.
“It’s a good thing,” Shad said in a low voice. He cleared his throat. “I would know your sweet scent anywhere, Harper.”
“You…you would?”
For a moment his opalescent eyes held hers, rainbow colors swirling in their depths. Then he nodded and looked away. “Yes.”
“But if—” Harper started to say but he cut her off.
“Come on.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the road. “We have to get to the forger’s tent quickly if we want to get Master Yll-no. He’s the best life-forger in the entire Thieves' Market.”
“Master ‘you’ll know?’” she asked, frowning.
“Yll-no,” Shad corrected her. He frowned. “We’ve lost enough time already. So come on—this way.”
Harper felt confused at his sharp attitude. It was almost like he regretted giving her the compliment about her sweet scent. Then why had he said it in the first place? And why had he bothered to heal her small wounds? What was going on in that enigmatic Kindred head of his?
Having no answers, Harper followed the big Kindred along the green cobblestone road running down the middle of the Market.
What else could she do?